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Saturday, 19 September 2015

I am one of those few people whom friends often tease “She’s
a school kid. She loves sleeping by 10:30pm”. Yes that’s true, although the
interpretation is wrong. I don’t love sleeping at 10:30 pm but I definitely
love waking up at 6 am. That is because human body needs on an average 7 hours
of sleep to be efficient, fresh and cheerful. So I hit bed by 10:30 pm and wake
up at 6 am.

And when I wake up, the peacefulness of early hours makes me
feel like my clock is working as per inter-stellar time. Within an early morning hour, I am able to do
so many things which I would otherwise struggle completing in half a day. This
efficiency, energy, and spirit is maintained through the day.

Below are the
reasons/benefits for which I prefer waking up early:

Winner’s confidence: There
is a sense of control acquired when you wake up suppressing your inner voice.
When the alarm goes off, there is a voice which tells you that you went late to
bed last night or no one around is awake, you also sleep. DON’T LISTEN. If you
win the battle here, things start on a high note and get even better during the
course of day.

Greeting the Day:
I enjoy nature. Walking on silent roads, watching birds chirping and flocking
in fascinating patterns, observing the sky getting illuminated with sun rays,
and spending time in lush green garden brings a perfect start to my day.

Morning Sky :)

Get Active: Morning is a great time to exercise. Along with bringing in lots of positive energy and enthusiasm, it’s a great stress buster and leaves you calm and focused for the rest of the day.

Fresh air in which I workout!

Quiet time: My
idea of personal time includes meditation,
reading & writing. I ensure to do at least 2 of these at the start of each
day. It helps me to connect with myself. Doing something for myself early in
morning energizes me and makes me ready for the day.

Ways of pursuing passion!

One step ahead with enhanced
productivity: Waking up early helps me be more organized and plan my day
well ahead. Instead of waking up from bed and rushing to office, I prefer
giving myself the time to list and prioritize the day’s activities. This helps
me do things with complete focus and by the time other people begin to work, I
would have already completed few important tasks. This gives me psychological
comfort and also buffer time for impromptu work.

More time for family: Early start to the day helps me complete my activities on time and leave office without having to worry about connecting back from home. Having done few things of my interest in morning, and completed the day’s work in office, in the evening I feel much more relaxed and satisfied about the way my day was spent. This leaves me with some more time for my family. I cherish sharing the dinner time with dad and chit chatting with mom while watching her favourite soap operas. I look forward to this time each day.

Time for beautiful sunset from office!

To conclude, waking up early has improved my quality of life
in many ways mentioned above. But in the beginning this may be hard. To start
with take baby steps like just waking up 15 minutes earlier. Get to bed an hour
earlier so that you won’t feel tired. It may take couple of days to adjust and
you may not feel the benefits right away, but stick with it. Once you
experience the benefits, it will be difficult to let go of this good habit.

P.S: However I like to stay late on one of either Friday/Saturday. This helps me come out of my routine and feel good about being still able to stay awake beyond regular time :P

Sunday, 13 September 2015

Last one week has been extremely generously on me, showering lots of love in personal life and appreciation in professional. While personal end can be put off for the moment, I would like to share my professional achievement here. I am just a month short of completing 2 years with Infosys. These 2 years looks not exactly like a flash in second, but yes, it doesn't feel like I am going to complete 2 years so soon. I have always enjoyed working here. Employees of Infosys, relative of employees, media & population at large have innumerable things to say about Infosys. Good, Bad, Ugly...! We're the first one to hit media top lines for positive or negative reasons. Personally for me, it has been a journey full of learning, fun & memories. For HR team, the rewards are given away semi-annually. There is a HR town hall in which people who have contributed significantly &who went the extra mile are rewarded. This time it was scheduled on 10th Sept. Morning when I logged in, my calendar looked packed. I was in no mood to attend the townhall and I thought let me utilize this time for completing piled up work. At 10:30 am, I thought its late now! And then an email popped in, saying the town hall will begin at 11 am. Snacks are being served from 10:30-11:00 am. So far I was giving myself the reason that it will be a long walk from bldg 4 to bldg 12 [Infoscions will understand this], and its better not to attend than being late for the town hall. But now I did not find an explanation to escape town hall. I said, its once in 6 month, something is done for us. Else always we're busy organizing things for others. Let me take this time out. With this thought, I took the long walk in pleasant weather and reached the auditorium. After 1.5 hour of speeches, discussions & debates on various topics, came the time for rewards. A presentation was projected on the Video Conference. And came in first slide. My eyes quickly skimmed through the names & photos and they stopped on one! It was a girl's photo in a blazer, written underneath - "Komal Laddha - HRD Shine Award in recognition of outstanding performance and contribution to HRD 2015-16". Yayyieee. It's me! And people in the room started clapping. SMS started pouring in. People on Lync started to ping to congratulate me. My team's email thread was started and team member's started writing some good words for me. And this was my moment of fame :) It really feels good when your colleagues come up to you and say "you totally deserved this". That's what matters more than an award.

I was still cherishing for this award, but it was not over yet! On 11th Sept, we had an internal team meeting. In that 2 members from each team were being recognized for the efforts put in to ensure maximum retention [ya! It's right. That's my job!] From my team it was me & my location colleague who received the appreciation & reward from our HR head. And all I could do was smile and say "thank you". Recognition for the work done, is one of the biggest motivation. You may be well paid off financially but if you do not enjoy coming to office each day, the journey in the organization is bound to be short lived. And that excitement to go to office comes when you have the confidence that your efforts will be recognized :)

Sunday, 16 August 2015

Climate change is so much heard of, so much talked about...but I never had a chance to see it this close. Although I was sitting on my couch watching just a documentary. But it was an experience of a lifetime. Hats off to the team of James Balog who put in unimaginable efforts just to convince people that we're going to witness the penalty for our ignorance & harsh treatment we give to our beautiful nature in our very own lifetime.

To give you a quick brief, James Balog is an acclaimed environmental photographer. He aims to spread awareness in people by showing the real climatic changes through photographs. He believes that one of the best ways to get real picture of global warming is to observe depletion of glaciers. And with this starts his journey of EIS [Extreme Ice Surey]. His team start off by setting up 25 cameras in different places [Greenland, Iceland & Alaska] by placing time-lapse cameras which capture photographs every one hour throughout the daytime. These places are not for human existence. Even technology will also fail to support in such severe & extremely cold conditions. And here is a team which keeps visiting these places periodically over 3 years to ensure the gadgets are working fine. Although watching it on a TV screen, the calving of ice for continuous 75 minutes, which is witnessed by Hames & his companion, leaves you in splits.

I was really moved watching this documentary. They have put in enormous efforts just so that they could let us know with evidence, what is the impact of our actions, on our beloved nature. The least we can do is to watch it. Sharing the breathtaking trailer which will compel you to watch the complete documentary.

Sunday, 9 August 2015

Hey All [more to myself],I am back to this place after 1 year 4 months. And it indeed feels nice :) I was waiting for this urge to come in me to get back to this place as writing cannot be imposed.It's now almost 2 years into my Job and Sunday is usually marked by some good time with friends, lots of time with family and some time with myself. All this while I resorted to a personal diary to share my thoughts. So what's special about this Sunday? Can you recollect the day when for the first time after learning to ride a bicycle you went out on your own? Or the first time after you learnt driving a bike by troubling someone to accompany you always and then a day came when you got the confidence to hit the road all by yourself? Well I had a similar experience today.Having learnt car driving 2 years back, I never felt the need to make it a part of my regular routine. Thanks to my simple lifestyle & awesome friends who always picked up and dropped me. But off late this was taking a hit on my self confidence. And 6 months back when dad got a second hand car only so that I could learn car driving without having to worry about implications if I went wrong, I decided "this is it" [Bas bahut hua]. Slowly, steadily with support of different people I started honing my skills of car driving. Sometimes I fared well, sometimes I went wrong, Once met with a accident and lots of instances when I felt this was not meant for me....! On one side came a voice from within "Komal, you need not do this. There are umpteen number of people who are living without knowing this". And immediately popped another voice "Komal, in today's world car driving is a must thing. If you let your fear take over you today, you'll never be able to drive".And today, 9th Aug, finally I gathered courage to take the car out all by myself for a lunch meet with friends. No one in car to guide me, to scare me, to motivate me. Me and my car. It was the same feeling as a child would get while taking his first steps in life [although I have no memory of it :P]Finally I checked all prerequisites mentioned by few experts and slowly took the car out from parking after taking God's name. My car's tire hardly took 2 rounds after the main gate, a black cat crossed from left to right in front of my car. Holy Shit! Whyyy??? Why now? I stopped the car aside. I got a feeling that this is divine hint to say me that I am not ready for this [You know how we are trained for this from childhood]. May be I should simply put the car back in parking and take an auto. I took a few seconds and told myself, "You never believed in these superstitions. Then why today? Why on this occasion. Drive slowly, drive carefully and you'll be fine". I started the car again and took a leap of courage to drive all by my own.What happened after it is nothing to be elaborated about. I am sitting here and posting this blog after such a long gap. With this, I trust you can imagine how full of adrenaline rush was my experience today from which I emerged victorious.Signing off with this thought :) Stay tuned."To escape fear, you have to go through it, not around" - Richie Norton

Sunday, 22 December 2013

It’s Christmas time :) This time of the year brings lots of
happiness, gifts and surprises. I remember as a childhood memory the importance
of this time when a family in my neighbourhood would put a shining star in
their balcony and I would know it’s Christmas. Children love this celebration
the most. They are the ones who honestly believe in the concept of Secret Santa
fulfilling their wishes. And as years go by it just remains as a memory.

So…Another year is about to draw its closure. Personally I am
waiting for this to happen with a blink of eye. In my view nothing has worked
right for me this year. Still in the last couple of months few things happened
and these changed my course of life to a great extent. And this post of mine is
dedicated as a note of thanks this Christmas to those two angels of mine.

I am sure both the persons would be totally surprised to
find their names here. Even I am just as I realised how you both have played an
important role in this phase of my life. To introduce my first angel – He’s the
person I look forward to meeting everyday at the bus stop. As they say few
people just click along well. And so was with him. The funda of travelling in
bus for an hour to reach workplace seemed weird to me. I delayed this
travelling as far as I could but finally it had to come. Post Diwali vacation it
was my first day to travel by office bus. Not sure of the pickup point, I
reached a few minutes [actually a lot early]. The place was empty and I told my
dad probably we’re at the wrong point. After a wait which looked like eternity,
a tall guy walking in his own world, at own pace with Infosys ID card emerged
from nowhere. Huh! I sighed at the confirmation of being at the right place.
And there it started. Quickly we found similarities of being MBA graduates 2013
pass out from similar colleges and lot of things in common to discuss.

I had filled my bag with a novel, my ear phones and lots of
sleep. I had my next list of reading books ready. Surprised with this amount of
effort? It was needed because I was at that point of life where I was making
efforts to draw myself out of the sad love saga of my life. A break up from a 5
year long relationship had left me devastated. I started dating one of my
friends but looked like I would create another mess and injustice. And so I had
been trying hard, time and again, to come out of this. I was unsuccessful all
the times. Finally with the start of my job I made up my mind. I promised
myself in these last two months I will walk on this path. And so I was slowly
trying to be with myself all the time.

I use to refer to him as my bus friend till I reconfirmed
his name :P His name is Vikky with a ‘k’. Yes, it’s his real name. I discovered
soon he’s one of those who will miss the bus very often and his life would seem
to be unusual if he doesn’t. And I experienced it soon enough where he took a
lift from a scooter uncle to chase the bus for around 2-3kms. Initially trying
to be quiet I would sleep off after sometime and avoid talking. But he’s a
chatter box. He would never give up. He would often interrupt my gaze and lost
thoughts outside window bringing up lot of varied and random topics of
discussions and I started to like it soon. I found these discussions better
than trying to sleep or forcing mind to keep thoughts away. And now I enjoy my bus journeys. It would not
be overboard if I say I look forward to them when in an otherwise no purpose
day [considering the ‘no-work’ disaster in office]

I think anything new in life keeps you going. Be it a new
activity, new hobby, new work or getting to know a new person. He’s my first
ever guy maarwadi friend with whom I get along well inspite of a lot of opinion
differences [I think it’s because of cancerian scorpion compatibility:)]. Initially it was a
lot of effort to keep myself away from checking my phone in bus and doing the
unwanted. But with my new companion it has become natural to me. These days, I atleast,
do not realise when the journey passes and we reach office and still are not
out of discussions. And then these continue in our return journeys. From guessing
the return travel plan of other person, to using office intranet to fix up
return time, to forcing each other to take early/late bus, it’s been a
wonderful start to these bus journeys.

I realise now how short lived this is going to be. Two weeks
more and he would be on his way for his new job. And that’s when I realised
God’s purpose of this brief interaction between us. The friendship has always
been about bus journeys. Come the weekend and we would be in our own lives. So
I am not sure how far we would be in contact post this, but you shall always be
remembered as my ‘bus friend’ and missed during the travel time.

Yet to click one together!

I am sure you all would be wondering this is only a part of
the day that is covered in this, what about the in between time. That’s where
my second and precious angel comes into picture. She isn’t the one I got
introduced to recently. We have been friends or rather ‘via- friends’. Her name
is Aditi, can be referred to as teddy bear :P We have been a part of common
group of friends between me and my brother. And that’s how I know her. But
today the Aditi I know is very different, the bond we share is one of the
bestest and the times we share is the most fun filled. Today we dislike when
people ask us how do you both know each other – and we have to talk about the
‘via’ friendship. We have become friends in ourselves.

She also works with Infosys but was a part of branch which
was 44kms away from mine. For some reason she took one month transfer to my
office and we ended up sharing the same cubicle. Till the time she came to my
office, my floor people would have hardly heard my voice. All my team members
use to be on other side of floor/different floor. Since she joined me in my
cubicle, the entire floor hears our laughter, hi-fi’s and discussions. Every
day she has been brining something new in my life. New learning’s, new
thoughts, new ways of looking at things and lot more. I have got to read a lot
of new things staying with her. We are now known for our long walks in and
outside campus and power naps at desk and in dorms. Engrossed in talks, we
would not realise how much we have walked or how much time we have spent. She
has been angelic enough to accompany me during day so that I would not feel
alone. She would study or finish her office work after I left from office. At
the end of the day when I would be back home, I was good to have a peaceful
sleep without much worry.

She has seen all of me in these two months. My crazy side (which
is at best with ) to my low side. She has seen tears in my eyes out of non-
stop laughter to emotional tears. She has seen me changing and adapting to her
crazy ways. One of these include the way we interact in washrooms :D We start
off our discussions as strangers –

‘heyyy! It’s been
long. I didn’t see you around. How have you
been?’

The responses would go on to fake onsite visits, the abroad
travel with family and many other classy, posh and cheesy things we would want
to do.

Initially I would react with the expression – ‘what the ****
is wrong with you’ or I would start laughing. These days I pull it off and
she’s amazed to see it.

We would start off from the desk because we had nothing
constructive to do on work front. And end up spending hours together with
‘Away’ status on office communicator. One
talk to another, one incident sharing to other, one opinion to other, one
belief to other…With so much ease I have disclosed most of myself to her in
such a short span of time. Never did I have second thoughts in mind considering
she’s first a friend of my brother.

Thanks to her we now somewhat have a youngsters group on
campus. No more do I have to bear the office gossips or backbites at lunch
table/chai breaks. I have people with similar thoughts to share table with and
topics of our interest to discuss. The recent spiritual insight of her life has
been mesmerizing. I owe it majorly to her for helping me in this not so good
phase of my life. Like we believe everything has a purpose. And this entire
turnout of events in last two months has been an affirmation of the same.

Again this is going to be short lived as soon she would be
back to her old office. I wish she stay here for longer. I wish for her a
special Christmas gift from Santa this year. Consider this as my way of
thanking you on this Christmas eve teddy bear :)

That's my Addie and fun times with her:)

Thank you to both of you for being the invisible hands in
helping me sail by being with me during this time.

P.S: Thank you God for once again making my belief strong
that you’re always with me, guiding me and helping my way out.

Wednesday, 11 December 2013

Hey der :) How r you all? I have kept myself intentionally away from blogging because it would have been overdose of negativity on this precious space. I am trying hard to forget it Asap and hence was not wanting to create a memory here about it. However I do intend to sum up sometime soon but not today surely :)Soooo...Its 11-12-13 :) Once in our lifetime calendar where numbers looks so perfect n sequential. My friend and me were trying to be super excited about the day but it turned out to be a normal one. Still I feel these small things matter to me a lot. That time in your mobile clock when it turns 3:33 am/pm or when I capture 1:43 am/pm. It gives an unknown sense of optimism that things following it will turn out to be perfect. And on this note I would like to sign-off and leave you all with a video on optimism:)

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An explorer by nature, I love capturing the cherishing moments of life in the form of words and photographs. Welcome to my space :) Life is all about events one after another. Years pass by, moments are lived and memories are made. I believe in going a step ahead.I take note of all those memories and experiences for myself and my louued ones.